Frau Holle | The Fir Tree

Frau Holle

Good girls go to heaven, naughty girls go everywhere. In the constant competition for recognition within society, anarchy is simply forgotten as a productive element of creation. Higher and higher, further and further, faster and faster – and in the end, only one winner gets the gold medal. But what about all the others standing beside the winners’ podium? Once your reputation is ruined, they say, you can live quite uninhibitedly. And suddenly the world is your oyster: those who behave well get top marks; the others, however, get sex appeal.

The Fir Tree

That fairy tale which has probably erected the most famous literary monument to the Christmas tree: ‘The Fir Tree’. A fairy tale about a tree that yearns for the future and, in doing so, misses out on the present – a story that is being retold in a whole new light in these times of climate change. Andersen tells the story of a career that could scarcely be recounted in a more brutal manner:

A young person who mistakes the world of appearances for reality, who trades the present for a promise and realises that the promise offers no way back. The applause dies down, the decorations are taken down, the tree is banished to the loft – only when it lies there, worn out and forgotten, does it realise what the forest was.

• For adults only – admission from 14 years of age